Business Directories

Batelco reaches roaming milestone

Manama, October 25, 2008

Batelco, Bahrain's leading telecommunications company reached a milestone by signing its 400th roaming agreement with an international telecoms provider.

On October 22, Batelco launched GPRS roaming on a bilateral basis with, DiGi, the second telecom operator in Malaysia.

The launch means that Batelco's mobile postpaid customers with GRPS/MMS enabled handsets can exchange pictures and video clips with their colleagues, family and friends and access the internet directly from their mobiles while roaming in Malaysia.

Batelco also signed an International Roaming agreement (No. 401) on October 23, with a new operator in Iran, MTN.

"We can be very proud of this milestone," Kaliaropoulos said, adding,"as we exceed the achievement of many telecom companies that are larger than Batelco."

Additionally, with the recent launch of Batelco World Freedom, all Batelco customers can now receive calls and SMS Free of charge while roaming in 21 countries.

Included in the list of countries are Saudi Arabia with Aljawal, Jordan (Umniah), Iraq (AsiaCell), Algeria (Djezzy), Norway (Telenor), Luxembourg (Tele2Tango), and Sudan, Nigeria, Ghana and Ivory Coast with MTN.

In addition, customers who roam in Albania, Armenia, Bosnia, Croatia, Estonia, Georgia, Moldova, Mozambique, Serbia, Slovakia and Slovenia also benefit from this service.

"Batelco is the first company in the world to provide free incoming calls from anywhere in the world in 21 countries," said Batelco Media & Government Relations general manager Ahmed Al Janahi.

"Furthermore, our prepaid customers can receive calls and send and receive SMS from anywhere in the world while roaming with 278 International operators in 112 countries worldwide."

"We will continue to sign new agreements with more international operators to ensure that our customers have access to the best telecommunications connections while roaming throughout the world," he added. - TradeArabia News Service